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John Blitheman's keyboard plainsongs: another ‘kind’ of composition?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2008
Extract
The foregoing quotation from an epitaph in the church of St Nicholas Olave, Queenhithe, summarizes most of what we know about the career of John Blitheman (c. 1525–91), one of the composers of keyboard plainsong settings represented in the so-called Mulliner Book, compiled probably in London sometime between the mid-1550s and about 1570. All but one of Blitheman's surviving keyboard works is contained in this manuscript.
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References
1 Reproduced from the Blitheman entry in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th edn (London, 1954).
2 British Library, Add. MS 30513. Modern edition by Stevens, Denis, Musica Britannica 1 (London, 1951; henceforth MB1).Google Scholar
3 The other is entitled simply ‘3 parts’ in British Library, Add. MS 30413.
4 English Keyboard Music Before the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1973), 37–8, 125–6.Google Scholar See also Stevens, Denis, The Mulliner Book: a Commentary (London, 1952), 25–6, 33–5, 39, 44–5, 58, 65;Google Scholar and Cuningham, Walker E., The Keyboard Music of John Bull (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1982), especially Chapter 2.Google Scholar
5 ‘Blitheman, , John, ’, New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Sadie, S. (London, 1980).Google Scholar
6 The setting of Christe Redemptor Omnium (MB1, no. 108) is not ascribed to Blitheman, but has been attributed to him on stylistic grounds.
7 MB1, nos. 49–52, 22.
8 The thirty-four-note hymn is further subdivided 8+9; 8+9 notes; see Caldwell, John (ed.), Early Tudor Organ Music, I, Music for the Office, Early English Church Music [EECM] 6 (London, 1966), 157.Google Scholar Blitheman's symmetrical approach is to be seen again in the second Eterne rerum verse, in which the main cadences fall on notes 11, 22 and 33 of the chant and during which the course of imitative entries is regularly spaced: F2C6F6F6F6C2F6F2C6D2C4C6D2A6C2G. Capital letters here represent pitch-degrees; intervening numerals represent the distance in crotchet beats (of MB1) between successive entries. Adapted from Joseph Kerman's shorthand scheme in ‘Byrd, Tallis and the Art of Imitation’ in Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: a Birthday Offering to Custave Reese, ed. Rue, Jan La (New York, 1967), 521.Google Scholar
9 Caldwell, EECM 6, 163.
10 The spacing of the first three (all on D) is even (five minims each time); thereafter eight minims, six minims and six minims to the end of the piece.
11 John Bull: Keyboard Music I, ed. Steele, John and Cameron, Francis, with additional material by Thurston Dart, Musica Britannica 14 (London, 2 rev./1967Google Scholar; henceforth MB14), no. 36. The piece is given anonymously in Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, Fonds du Conservatoire, Res. 1185 (the only source) but has been attributed to Bull on grounds of style and its inclusion in this important and reliable source of Bull's keyboard works.
12 Incidentally, a diminution of Figure 1 is introduced in bar 56, a ‘coda’, extending the final note (G) of the chant.
13 MB14, nos. 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43.
14 The authenticity is not questioned in Cunningham, Keyboard Music of John Bull (see note 4). The true chant bases of the seven verses of Telluris ingens were first noted by John Caldwell, ‘Keyboard Plainsong Settings in England, 1500–1660’, Musica Disciplina, 19 (1965), 129–53 (esp. 141–2), and incorporated into the 2nd edn of MB14